


Reclamation

by Han_shot_first



Series: Elder Pattern [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Abusive Relationships (Past), Body Modification, Elder Pattern, F/M, Gen, One Shot, Tattooist Sandor, Tattoos, body reclamation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2019-05-31
Packaged: 2020-04-05 06:23:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19042939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Han_shot_first/pseuds/Han_shot_first
Summary: “You ever been inked before?”“No.”“Pierced?”A beat.“Not… exactly.”He grunts.“Take off your clothes.”She breathes out in a rush.-----Sometimes, when you've been traumatised beyond words, you need to reclaim your body in a visceral way before you can truly feel that it is yours again.AKA, Sansa goes to the best tattooist in Oldtown on her journey towards body reclamation.





	Reclamation

She walks into the shop and sees the flash tattoo artwork decorating the plain, cream colored stone walls of Elder Pattern, Oldtown’s oldest and most respected body modification studio. All of it is very tasteful, set in black lacquer frames, and hung in precise distances along the walls. 

And not a single one is what she wants. Though she supposes it might appeal to the masses.

“Can I help you?” says the person behind the counter. Sansa looks at the tall, closely cropped blond, considers the deep voice and the darkest blue eyes Sansa has ever seen. She cannot decide if the person she is looking at is male or female, and the androgyny intrigues her more than she wants to admit. Her parents had always told her that only the heart that beats within the chest matters, and she has always told herself she believes this, but as she looks at the person behind the polished black marble counter, she finds that she’s looking to place them into a convenient box, and she can’t.

The blond narrows their eyes at her, and _knows_. Sansa is flooded with shame.

They are wearing a sleeveless top, and their shoulders are broad, leading to arms chiselled with sinewy muscle. They are covered with the most intricate sleeves of knights on horses, each rendered in the most exquisite shades of black, grey, and white. The effect is both delicate and brutal. The shield of the left knight displays a coat of arms decorated with two moons and two stars. The other knight holds aloft a sword in a charge, and in their off-hand is a shield decorated with a crowned stag.

The blond clears their throat. Sansa blushes.

“I said, can I help you, miss?”

“Good afternoon,” Sansa says politely, taking hold of her manners far too late to make a decent impression. “I have an appointment with Ser Clegane.” 

She knows her accent marks her as coming from the North. A rarity in Oldtown, but not completely unknown.

“I see.” They pull out the laptop, and begin to type. “And which one would that be?”

Sansa looks confused.

“There’s more than one?”

“Well, there’s the big one, and the even bigger one.” They look up, expecting a response.

Sansa holds their gaze for a moment, wondering if they’re playing a trick on her. It wouldn’t be the first time. She says, “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

They stare back at her, trying to take her measure, wondering if the redhead is one of those rich girl time wasters who like to come in off the street to gawk at the freaks. Worse, is she one of those types who wants a tattooed feather on her shoulder, one that floats off into little dandelion seeds, just like every other rich girl time waster? 

Or is she one of those who wants a piercing for as cheap as possible, and can’t understand why Elder Pattern doesn’t pierce for prices like those offered by one of the market stalls that don’t care about little issues like _sterilisation_ or _implant-grade titanium_?

They breathe deeply, and try for a polite smile. It looks more like a grimace to Sansa.

“All right, miss. Let’s start over. What’s your name?” The blond pulls the laptop over, opening the scheduling programme, and begins sifting through the lists for the week.

Sansa is becoming irritated. 

“Why do you need to know my name? I’m the one o’clock. My instructions were clear to Ser Clegane. It should just be me, and absolutely no one else in the studio. Look, if you just check your calendar app---” 

Now the blond is just pissed off. It’s clear this redhead is just like all the other nobles who come to Oldtown, full of entitlement and spoiled beyond reason.

“Don’t touch my laptop. And what do you mean, just you? We never take single client bookings for an afternoon. I don’t know who you think you are, but---”

The heavy oak door behind the polished black marble counter swings open, and Sandor Clegane walks through.

“I got it, Brienne,” he rumbles. Brienne turns swiftly on her heel and stares at him.

“What do you mean, you have it? What is this? We had at least four bookings for this afternoon. They’ve all been wiped. And where’s your brother gone?”

“As I said,” he replies, gritting his teeth, “I got it.”

Sansa watches the exchange with surprise. Brienne is a feminine name, she thinks, and now she feels like a shit for having a convenient box to put her in. 

Brienne tosses her head back, and glares at Sandor.

“Don’t ever touch my laptop again,” she says with menace. 

“Or you’ll do what, woman,” he growls back. Sansa feels worse.

“Or you’ll never get another raise. Or another plate of my chicken and biscuits,” Brienne says with a great deal of satisfaction. 

He blinks, and the violence of the room suddenly dissipates. Now he just looks like an overgrown little boy. _Seven_ , he nearly pouts.

“Shit, Brie,” he says unhappily. “That’s just mean.”

“I mean it, Sandor,” she says, her tone firm. “My shop, my rules. And my chicken.”

Now Sansa is really surprised. The most famous tattoo and piercing studio in Westeros belongs to a woman? The industry had traditionally been closed to women, as the men had refused to teach their skills to them, let alone work for one of them. Elder Pattern was supposedly the oldest continuously running body modification studio in Westeros, rumoured to be over a thousand years old, with its origins dating back to the Children of the Forest, if the stories were true. Its ownership was said to be controlled by the Patterns Guild, whose insignia, a needle and a squid, was discreetly displayed on the wall near the cash register. 

Brienne notices Sansa’s expression, and hides a smile. She likes being underestimated only because the payback is sweet.

Sandor turns directly to Sansa, and says, “My lady.”

She may be frightened by the scars ravaging his face, but she pulls herself together. She has seen pure evil. It was beautiful, and it smiled like princes in the story books. 

Coming here was her idea. She tells herself she is not afraid. She tilts her head towards the room beyond the open door, but she can see little beyond the doorway. She glances back at the man who holds it open. 

Yes, Sandor Clegane is ugly as fuck. The left side of his face looks like it has been dipped in wax, then carved with unkind fingers. His left eye appears undamaged, from what little of it she can see from behind the straggly curtain of dark brown hair covering the left side of his face.

His eyes are grey but clear, and they hold her gaze without malice. They are as brutal and honest as the open sea. She lets her eyes roam his perfectly untouched right side, the contours of his cheekbone, the lift of his lip, and the stubble on his jaw. She sees he is gritting his teeth. 

There are no lips left on the left side of his face. She wonders if it hurts. She wonders if he can feel anything there at all.

After all, Sansa knows a lot about scar tissue.

She can tell that he does not enjoy her eyes on his skin, but she cannot help herself. She is utterly fascinated by his texture. She wonders, somewhere under the horror and fascination, what it would feel like to have all that texture against her smooth palms. 

Under her lips. 

She’s staring again. Brienne has apparently been softly speaking, but it isn’t until she snorts that Sansa startles to awareness. Sandor sighs, and tries again.

“My lady,” he says, his voice gruff. “You may leave your jacket with Brienne, if you like.”

“Oh! N…no. Thank you, but I’ll keep it with me.” 

“As you wish,” he rumbles. He nods at Brienne, and leads Sansa into the large room beyond.

There are a few tables and long, black chairs covered in vinyl set up in spaces along the edges of the studio. Each are meticulously clean. The air smells of antiseptic and bleach. It is at once a comforting and terrifying smell for Sansa. She thinks of hospitals, broken bones, lacerations, and endless questions. 

She breathes in deeply, from her nose, into her belly. Holds it in, and exhales through her mouth.

Sandor turns as he offers her a seat, and watches her exhale. His eyebrows knit together slightly. He recognises the deep breathing technique. He’s seen it enough in his clients when they need to reduce the pain of the tattooing, or when his brother is being particularly brutal with his clients. Sandor’s also used it when he’s been in pain, more often than he wants to recall.

He withdraws from his memories very quickly, and waits until she is situated. She arranges herself daintily on the seat across from him, tucking her feet under her like a bloody queen.

“Ordinarily, I’d do this as a first booking. We’d discuss what you want, you’d pay a drawing fee, then you’d go away, and I’d draw. Then you’d come back, fuss over all the shit I've drawn, tell me to fix it, fuck off, come back, bitch some more, fuck off, and we’d keep going until I’d finally tell you to shit or get off the pot,” he says. He picks up a pencil at his drawing desk and fiddles with it. 

“But you paid two thousand up front, said you wanted a full freehand back piece, starting today, and would keep paying for as long as it took to get it done. Provided the studio was kept completely empty of all clients, except for you.”

“I did,” she confirms. She stares at him directly now, still using that deep breathing technique. Her pupils are slightly dilated. The endorphins have already kicked in. The technique must be well established for her.

“You ever been inked before?” 

“No.”

“Pierced?”

A beat.

“Not… exactly.”

He grunts. 

“Take off your clothes.”

She breathes out in a rush. He’s fucked up her rhythm. 

“What, now?”

He gestures around them. 

“The fuck do you think we’re doing here? Can’t tattoo you through your clothing. I need to see what I’m working with.”

She stares at him a moment longer. Then she stands up, and takes off her jacket. He looks at her, and she turns away, showing him her back as she strips off.

He glares at her back, and finds he is irritated at her for some reason. He really shouldn’t be, but he is. She’s paid him up front, and more than four times his normal rate to clear out the studio. She’s been courteous, on time, and even called him Ser Clegane, though he's no defender of the realm. 

Still, he’s growing fidgety with his temper, and he can’t figure out why. 

Her soft, lambskin black leather jacket is draped carefully over the back of a chair. It probably cost as much as her initial deposit, he muses, and the thought angers him more.

She pulls her red hair up into one hand, and with that magic all women with long hair seem to possess, it becomes a ponytail. He is mesmerised as it flows into a messy bun. It looks like a rose of fire, and now he’s deeply uncomfortable. His face hurts. He shifts his hips, trying to ease the erection that he didn’t expect to feel. He is very glad she cannot see him.

The silk peach blouse she wears is nearly translucent over an equally thin silk camisole. He can see a white lace bra underneath, and his mouth is suddenly very dry. He decides this is the worst idea he has ever had.

When she was just an email and not a face, just an idea and a bank deposit, this was easy money. He thought she was just some woman with more money than sense, and Sandor Clegane was never one to shy away from an easy payday. 

Standing in front of him, she looks like a strip tease, but he is a goddamned professional tattoo artist, and fuck this. He reaches for the best defence he knows. The one that has never, ever let him down.

Anger floods his system. This little rich girl is just a fucking tease. She’s never had a tattoo before, and she wants a full back tattoo? She’s gonna scream after just a few minutes, demand her money back, and he’s gonna have to toss her out on her ass. He stokes that irritated fire as high as he can, because it’s killing his erection, and he really needs that right now.

He turns away and starts taking out some pens and markers, not wanting to watch any further disrobing movements. He reaches for a bottle of water on the far end of his desk and takes a deep pull. He wishes it was alcohol, but he’s a goddamned fucking professional, and he does not tattoo when drunk or high, nor does he tattoo anyone who is drunk or high. 

Not anymore, at least.

He hears her turn back around, and he does the same. She’s holding her silk blouse to her chest, and he narrows his eyes on her.

“I didn’t say turn around,” he growls. “Unless you want a chest piece.”

“Oh! Uh, no,” she says, laughing with a slight hysterical edge to her voice.

He makes a twirling motion with his finger, and she turns quickly around. He doesn’t hesitate; he grabs her hips, she squeaks, and he pulls her towards him. He just wants to look over her back. He just wants to see the canvas he’s going to work on, for however long she lets him.

He tries to be a professional. He really does.

But what he sees makes his heart stop for a moment.

“What is this,” he says in a low voice.

She is silent for a long moment, and then a very quiet, very simple voice says, “Can you cover it?”

He stares at the criss-crossing scars. The deep lacerations. Teeth marks. Fucking teeth marks?

He breathes in very, very slowly, into his gut. He exhales out. The breath puffs over her skin, which is pebbling into a fine dusting of gooseflesh. 

And she’s moving away from him.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have come here, just keep the money---”

She’s scrambling for her bra, and he says, “Stop! Sansa, I mean, Lady Stark, I mean wait.”

She’s staring at him over her pale, creamy shoulder, and her blue eyes are wide and stricken. He looks back at her, and tries to rule his face into something that isn’t abject pity. 

“Just… let me see what we’ve got to work with,” he tries again. This time with a gentleness in his voice that he didn’t know he had until it rings in the air between them.

He doesn’t touch her again. He simply looks into her blue eyes, and says nothing further. Does nothing further. No sudden movements.

She’s clutching the bra, camisole and blouse tightly in her fists, against her breasts, and he can see more scars on her arms and belly. Maybe more on her chest, he thinks, but he can’t see for certain. His chest tightens in fury, but he is careful to keep that from his face.

Someone hurt this woman, and she is here for his help. She breathes in deeply, shuddering, and turns around slowly. Her arms do not release. She is still holding her clothes tightly to her chest, ready to bolt if she does not like what he does or says.

I will never move suddenly in her presence again, he thinks to himself with a foreign emotion that he recognizes as shame, which he shoves deep under his scars, never to be reexamined, as she aligns her back to his face, allowing him enough closeness to let him view as much as he wants.

The wounds look at least a year old he estimates, not daring to ask, but he thinks of his previous clients, and knows that is good enough for him. Not everywhere is scarred, so the pain will be variable, he thinks. He knows from painful experience and from his clients that tattooing over scar tissue hurts like a bitch, and wonders how best to explain this to her, when she starts to speak.

“Ser Clegane, can you cover it?”

“Just Sandor,” he says immediately, “and yes.” 

I will cover you with anything you want, he thinks to himself. I’ll cover you in roses, sweep these scars under a blanket of peonies, chrysanthemums, and cherry blossoms. He stares at the long scars that look like deep caning stripes, and buries his rage under thoughts of long stems and wild leaves, winding around her anatomy in traditional styles. He thinks of briar roses, princesses in castles--- 

“Good,” she says, and her voice is like ice and snow. “I want a giant direwolf.” 

His vision of botanical glory erupts in a fountain of cursing.

“You want a fucking what?” 

“A giant grey direwolf, with yellow eyes. Female, with sharp teeth and claws. Oh! And she needs to be… somehow dainty. But sweet. I need you to make sure she’s sweet.”

“How the fuck is a direwolf sweet?”

She keeps describing her sweet but terrifying direwolf while Sandor sits behind her, trying to reconcile his desire to cover her in pretty flowers while she waxes on about her vision for a killer beast rampaging across her back.

He stops her midsentence as she’s describing the different shades of grey she wants, as though he isn’t an expert in that by now, after the thousands of hours of black and white work he’s done over decades as a Pattern Guildmaster.

“Stop,” he says gruffly. “I get the fucking point, little bird.”

She looks over her shoulder.

“What did you call me?”

He ignores that.

"So. A lady direwolf. A protector. Someone to watch your back, forever.”

She stops for a moment. Then she looks down, and nods almost imperceptibly. 

“It’s going to hurt a lot,” he rumbles. “Going over scar tissue is much worse than unscarred flesh. Over bone hurts like nothing else. I’ll be on your spine and parts of your ribs. Are you sure this is what you want?”

She looks directly into his grey eyes. In the fluorescent light of his studio, flesh seems suddenly much more real. There is no hiding in this room. There is only Sansa and Sandor here, her scars and his, her desires and his talent, and her memories and his truthfulness. 

“Do it.”

Over the next few hours, Sansa relearns pain. She has never forgotten what they did to her, but now it is time to reclaim what they took.

She breathes in deeply as Sandor’s giant hands touch her again and again. In such a short time, she’s gotten used to his manner, his crudeness, and his grumbling ways. 

She actually finds him quite refreshing, though she doesn’t think she’ll ever admit it. At least, not to his face.

Sandor is nothing like her noble father, who would have just as soon as cursed around their family as take a shit on the dinner table.

Sandor is nothing like Joffrey, her first boyfriend, whose pretty face and refined ways quickly turned to vicious cruelty, malicious sadism, and the first beatings she’d endured.

Sandor is definitely nothing like Ramsay, her first and only lover, who had promised her an escape from Joffrey, and all the love and devotion that Joffrey had never provided.

Ramsay the bastard, Ramsay the rapist. Ramsay who spent over two years courting her, giving her time to recover from Joffrey’s abuses, laying the deep trap that would make her his. 

He showered her with flowers, extravagant jewellery, and extended weekend trips to Dorne. Whenever she asked to meet his parents, he shied away from the topic, always saying that the time would come, and he wanted it to be perfect. She was charmed by his attentiveness, his desire to make everything just so.

He wanted her to move in within six months, and she was overjoyed. Slowly, things began to change.

He didn’t want her to visit her family in Winterfell. He couldn’t bear for her to leave him. 

And so she didn’t.

He didn’t want her to have her own career. His work as a consultant brought in enough for his extravagant lifestyle, and a man should provide for his woman, so she didn’t need her own career. 

And so she didn’t.

Little by little, she felt herself slipping away, until one day he told her that he didn’t like the way she did her hair. For a week, she tried different hairstyles to please him, until he finally he chose one that he liked best, declared that it was the loveliest for her, and that she should never change it. 

The first time he came home to find her hair in a different arrangement, he beat her to unconsciousness. When she awoke, he curled around her, cooing in her ear about how he was so sorry that she had made him so angry. That he only wanted her to look her best, and how could she not understand that when she looked her best, it showed how much he loved her?

She held him tightly, whispered that she understood, that of course she forgave him, and the bruises took weeks to fade completely. She was glad she had never thrown away all of her many concealers. She needed the yellow and green ones to cover the purple and red bruises.

It was the first of many transgressions. The more she tried to please Ramsay, the more it seemed he needed to inflict his control onto her. Every inch a sadist, she didn’t realize how far gone she was until one day, her sister Arya had broken into her home with a man she didn’t recognize, a man with red and white hair, and had taken her to a hospital.

It would be another year before she broke Ramsay’s hold on her, but painful inch by brutal mile, she had done it. 

The restraining order was in place, and her family were firmly rallied around her banner now. 

All that was left were the scars on her body, in her heart, and on her soul.

Sandor is nothing like any of them, she muses as he says, “Here, little bird.” He touches her just off the center of her spine, somewhere to the right she thinks, and she says, “Do it,” the same as she has many times over the past hours.

The whir of his tattoo machine begins again, and she braces herself as the needles pierce her skin. The pain is a revelation. She knows it isn’t as deep as some of the wounds Ramsay gave her, but the nerves are so close to the surface, the pain shrieks across her body. This time, Sandor’s found a nerve that runs from her shoulder and into her right arm, her right foot, and even into the very tip of her right eyeball. She thinks of the anatomy drawings she saw in Ramsay’s medical journals once and she wants to scream, but just like with Ramsay, she doesn’t.

Ramsay liked her screams, and she learned early that more screams meant more pain.

So she breathes in through her belly, makes it as big and round as she can against the unyielding hardness of the vinyl bed beneath her. 

It helps. She goes into a place in her mind where she wanders the walls of Winterfell, into the godswood, into the branches of the heart tree. She breathes in and thinks she hears her brother Bran whisper her name, but that’s madness. It’s just the pain. She doesn’t know if Sandor’s going through scar tissue or unblemished skin right now. It’s all just pain to her. 

He’s moving off from the nerve now, and into a different area. It still hurts, but it’s much less painful than before. Manageable. 

She breathes out the pain through her mouth, expelling the vile memories of Ramsay Bolton. She sighs in relief. 

An eternity later, she hears Sandor speak again.

He’s pressing into a new place, moving upwards into the top of her right shoulder blade. A brief rub of lubricant into her skin, prepping for the ink.

“Here, little bird.”

“Do it.”

He works quietly. There is no music playing in the studio, as per her wishes. She just wants to drift to the sound of the needle.

Sandor likes the silence. He doesn’t like to talk when he works. He just wants to immerse himself. Nearly two hours in and he has to admit it: Sansa is a perfect fucking client. 

She doesn’t complain, she sits like a rock, doesn’t want to play shitty fucking music, and just lets him get on with creating his bloody work.

He is grateful, but he’s still angry. He doesn’t know where that anger is coming from, and he doesn’t know how to thank her for letting him do this to her.

“Thank fuck you aren’t a chatty bird,” he says after three hours. “Can’t stand chatty fuckers.”

She sighs, still feeling some of her endorphins, but she’s definitely shaking now. He’s wiping down her back.

“We can take a break. I need a piss,” he says.

“Okay,” she replies, the first new thing she’s said in hours. He looks at her worryingly.

“If you need to eat, drink, take a piss, whatever, now’s the time,” he says as he stands up, discarding his gloves into a nearby receptacle. 

“Ladies first,” he says, pointing at the door near the back of the room. She stands up unsteadily, forgetting that she’s topless, and she’s so high and breathless on endorphins and the pain in her back, she barely notices when the room begins to spin.

He grabs for her arms before she can fall. She closes her eyes, a tiny smile on her near bloodless face. She’s trying so very hard not to black out, but she can see the pretty white stars behind her eyes.

They’re old friends, those stars, but usually they show up when a fist is planted in her face.

“I’ve got you,” he murmurs. “Just take it easy. You just need some water and some sugar in you. Helps with the endorphins. Did you eat anything before you got here?”

He’s aware he’s got her tits nearly balanced on his arm, but he’s staring intently at her face. She’s so pale, and the contrast of her red hair against her skin is incredible. The artist in him is entranced by the blue veins pulsing in the skin under her eyes. The man in him just wants to ensure nothing bad ever happens to her ever again. He can’t help it.

He really likes that she’s not wearing much makeup. It’s not that he has a problem with makeup. Far from it. With his line of work, he can’t afford to give a shit how people express themselves. 

Without the makeup though, this close up he can see faint traces of fine lines on her forehead, and the tiny pores on her proud, straight nose. His nose is long and hooked, and he knows the rest of his face is nothing to be proud about. He is fascinated by the delicate shades of blue, cream, yellow and pink kaleidoscoping in her skin. He is a dedicated black and white tattooist, but he suddenly finds himself itching to pick up some actual colors for once, just to see how they would bloom on her skin.

Her eyes flutter back open, and he’s struck dumb by her blue eyes. They’re almost electric, he thinks, under these harsh lights. 

Her lips curve in a small smile, and she lifts herself back from his arms.

“Thank you,” she murmurs. “I’m quite all right now.” 

As she walks to the studio’s only toilet, he realises he never got a peek at her breasts. 

And then he looks away when he also realises that right now, he doesn’t even care.


End file.
